Mad Max Series

There is a movie theatre in my city where, if you go at 10:00pm and have a student ID, tickets are $1.00. They just finished a four week long Mad Max Marathon, showing the next Mad Max in the series each week. Me and three of my friends went every Friday night at 10:00pm for four weeks straight with everything building up to Mad Max: Fury Road in 3D. After seeing the first Mad Max we all kind of accepted that we were just going so that we could make it to week four aka Fury Road week. And honestly, if those tickets had been more than $1 each it wouldn't have been worth it, but they were, so it was an experience worth having.

Now, in my opinion, the only Mad Max worth seeing is Fury Road. However, it is also my opinion that watching the three prior to the new amped up version definitely heightens the experience. There's definitely an interesting backstory and crazy interesting parallels. It's also really cool to watch Max's transformation through the movies because there are noticeable differences. I watched Fury Road once before I saw it in this marathon and I didn't pay much attention to the opening monologue and I certainly didn't take into consideration what the meaning of his flashbacks could have meant. I can say with certainty that seeing the three films Fury Road was a continuation of definitely enhanced my movie watching experience.

Mad Max
This movie was the introduction. Honestly, I don't remember much of this movie other than he has a wife and child in it and the evil biker gang kills them, and the apocalypse isn't that advanced at this point. That's the thing about these movies that is so great about Fury Road-- the beginning three movies try to squeeze in a plot in between car chases and practical effects crashes and it just doesn't work. There were some super 80's make out scenes between Max and his wife, which made everyone in my group feel weird including myself. The villain in this movie had a skunk stripe in his hair and he's super funky-- my friends had a theory that this villain is actually Immortan Joe in Fury Road. After some quick Googling, I found out that the same actor plays each character, which may be an indicator of the same character, but I found no solid written evidence that they are actually the same. This movie isn't great but as an introduction to Mad Max, I would say it provides the necessary information.

Mad Max 2
This would be the only film out of the three oldies that I would recommend seeing. It's fine. Really that's all it is, but it has the most in substance, and the plot in this movie makes the most sense out of the first three. This is where the movies start to actually be folk tails about Mad Max. He helps this group of people escape from the villains who want to take over their village place and at the end of the movie there is a voice-over that talks about how that was years ago and Max was the hero that saved their civilization-- things like that. This is the best of the oldies mainly because it has a plot that makes sense while the other two really don't at all.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
I was expecting so much from this movie because it's the one I've heard the most about. I was so disappointed. Tina Turner was so underwhelming and I thought she was going to make the movie amazing! Once again, this plot is just a loose thread shoved in between the actions scenes and the car chase scenes so that they could call it a movie. I liked this movie the least actually because it was the most underwhelming and I was constantly wondering when the main plot would take off, but things kept happening that changed the direction of the plot every 30 minutes. It was hard to keep up and there wasn't as much action so I really just left the theater confused, but I had also eaten some buffalo wings so I at least left satisfied.

Mad Max: Fury Road
What a feminist icon of a movie. The best part of this movie is that Max has been through so much at this point that he doesn't want to talk or interact with anyone, which means Furiosa takes the reigns and is super badass and feminist. Something this movie learned from the other movies is that you don't necessarily have to shove exposition down peoples throats. The plot is allowed to be vague and the audience can suspend their disbelief if you make everything else visually amazing. There is a reason why Mad Max: Fury Road won all the technical awards at the Oscars this year. Literally the things that happen in this movie are 1. Max gets captured (we don't know why) 2. Furiosa takes a wrong turn 3. they chase her and bring Max along (eventually Max breaks free and pairs with Furiosa) 4. they get to where they are going and it isn't what they thought 5. they go back to where they came from. That is literally all that happens in the movie. But it is executed so brilliantly because in between all those plot points it's just action-- pure action. This movie is so amazing because it's basically like, yeah, we know there isn't much of a plot here, but look at this two-hour-long car chase in the desert. They made an incredible decision to stick with practical effects for the cars like the originals, but unlike the originals, they were also able to input some insane computer generated effects (that sandstorm, oh my God).
Fury Road also has some incredible messages. Immortan Joe is basically the physical manifestation of the patriarchy, and Furiosa's defiance of him by rescuing his 'favorite' sex slaves from sex slavery is an incredible feminist message. The fact that it's a woman to save these other women and then Max tags along because he is also escaping equates the power of men and women. It would have been such a typical enforcement of male stereotypes if it were Max, the typical knight in shining armor, saving these enslaved women. There are plenty of parts where Furiosa does something better than Max and there's no condescending "that was good for a girl" comment. Specifically, there's a scene where Max is trying to shoot out the headlights of a car and there's three bullets left and he shoots and misses twice. Furiosa then comes over, aims over his shoulder, and tells him not to breath, and then proceeds to perfectly shoot out the light and then they just move on. Which is amazing. No pondering on the fact that wow she's a woman and can shoot a gun, gee whiz! This movie is filled with female empowerment, which automatically makes it better than the previous movies.
There's a lot of cool 80's cinematic shot throwbacks and there's a lot of blatant use of 3D. Those were some of the most entertaining cinematic parts of the movie.

The one thing the new Mad Max could have incorporated from the old Mad Max's, was to put Tom Hardy in more leather pants just like they slipped Mel Gibson's supple bottom into a pair of skin tight animal hide. I am glad they got rid of the BDSM attire the bad guys were wearing. Ass-less chaps are actually not flattering on anyone. I really liked that they kept the ending of the movie consistent with the other movie endings where he leaves the group of people he helped and they voice over the ending scene talking about him as is he were a myth. Obviously, Fury Road is just generally more aesthetically pleasing, but it is also better in recognizing what it is. It wasn't nominated for best screenplay for a reason, but it won a bunch of awards because it was still so amazing. Even so, if you find Fury Road interesting and want to know some more backstory, it's worth it to watch the not as good trilogy before-hand.